A truck drives past a drilling operation on Weld County Road 5 on July 25 in unincorporated Weld County near Berthoud. Longmont Times-Call

The Denver Post published the following correction in the Aug. 8 newspaper: “Because of incorrect information from an outside source, a photo caption on Wednesday’s 14A for a story on the Colorado Oil and Gas Association’s conference misidentified equipment pictured: The operation shown is a drill rig in Weld County.”

We decided to run the correction after numerous readers called to complain that the photo, above, was not of a hydraulic fracturing (or fracking) operation but of a drilling rig.

I am the son of a mining engineer and in the late 1970s worked on a drill rig exploring for uranium in southern Colorado. So I was prepared to defend the photo caption, especially because the photographer’s information on the photo’s metadata identified it as a fracking operation.

A few phone calls and a lot of discussions later, I was convinced the caption needed clarification and the only way to do so was to correct the caption: It was wrong, and so was I.

If I understand correctly, a drill rig is brought in to sink the hole to the oil and gas zone and is then replaced by a “completion rig,” which prepares the hole with a wellhead that then can receive the fracking end of the process. So the operation with the tall derrick is replaced with a tangle of pipes and tanks. I am told that for the above-pictured rig, which is operating across the street from property owned by U.S. Rep. Jared Polis, the drilling would take about 20 days. The fracking operation, pictured below, will be done later and is supposed to take only three or four hours.

Why is this important? While not as divisive a topic as gun control, abortion or free speech, hydraulic fracturing has become a hot debate between environmentalists and the extractive industry, particularly in the Northeastern and Western states where, respectively, the Marcellus and Niobrara shale formations are drawing so much activity.

Thus it is important for your Denver Post to be as accurate and honest with the words and images that appear across its platforms. And when we are wrong, we will right that wrong. And we will learn more along the way.

Workers tend to a wellhead during a hydraulic fracturing operation at an Encana Oil & Gas (USA) Inc. gas well outside Rifle, in western Colorado. Associated Press file

During the past decade I have had several conversations with groups and individuals that eventually landed on use of the term illegal immigrant to describe those who have unlawfully come to the United States. I have heard all kinds of arguments. I always tensed up when someone argued illegal immigrant was the same as racial epithets used to describe blacks and Jews. I still believe those comparisons are wrongheaded. But other examples stayed with me. I remember once being told that a young girl cried upon seeing a relative described as an illegal immigrant.

Demonstrators protest the deportation of people in the country unlawfully during a rally at the University of Denver on Oct. 3, 2012. (Hyoung Chang, The Denver Post)

Yesterday, I decided The Denver Post will no longer use the term “illegal immigrant” when describing a person in the country unlawfully. If we know the actual circumstances we will describe them. The word “illegal” will not be applied to a person, only an action.

We began discussing this issue about a month ago after The Associated Press changed its policy. The AP’s action followed a number of other news organizations, such as NBC News, that had long abandoned the use of “illegal immigrant.” A cross section of staff was invited to discuss their views, and then we reviewed the usage in our own news organization. There were not many instances outside of quotations where we described a person as an illegal immigrant, and even rarer in a headline. Why? Because we generally don’t know a person’s status and it is not our practice to ask.

News organizations use their “stylebooks” to govern use of language in stories. Consistency in usage helps with clarity, authority and matters of taste in our writing. The Associated Press Stylebook is the foundation of our style, though there are many instances where we part ways with the AP to tailor our writing to our communities. Here is our entry:

[media-credit name=”Fred R. Conrad, The New York Times” align=”alignnone” width=”495″][/media-credit]

New York Times Building on Eighth Avenue in New York City.

Jim Romenesko, an Illinois journalist whose blog carries commentary and insider information on the media, has written about words and phrases that journalists love too much. He cited headlines on three music reviews in The New York Times that had musicians “channeling” great artists in three genres:

He also linked to an entry by New York Times standards editor Philip B. Corbett, who decried in his “After Deadline” blog the reemergence of the use of “channel” in stories.

“There’s nothing wrong with comparing a young singer to an older one, a memoir writer to a famous literary character, or a yoga aficionado to Gumby,” Corbett writes. “But to my ear, at least, the freshness of those recent comparisons was lost because we fell back on a faddish and annoying cliché: So-and-so is ‘channeling’ his ‘inner’ what’s-his-name.”

U.S. Rep Diana Degette was mocked Wednesday for her comments about ammunition clips and magazines, and for a statement she issued in an attempt to clarify her comments.

DeGette spokeswoman Juliet Johnson on Wednesday said: “The congresswoman has been working on a high-capacity assault magazine ban for years and has been deeply involved in the issue; she simply misspoke in referring to ‘magazines’ when she should have referred to ‘clips,’ which cannot be reused because they don’t have a feeding mechanism.”

And that, also, is wrong. (And what the heck is an “assault magazine”? Is that something for slaying flies?)

[media-credit name=”Jorge Duenes/Reuters” align=”aligncenter” width=”495″][/media-credit] Immigrants hide from a border patrol vehicle while waiting a chance to cross into the United States at the border fence on the outskirts of the Tijuana.

The Stylebook no longer sanctions the term “illegal immigrant” or the use of “illegal” to describe a person. Instead, it tells users that “illegal” should describe only an action, such as living in or immigrating to a country illegally.

In other words, the AP now suggests writers can use “illegal” to describe an action, but not a person.

Simon Akam at Slate laments the death of the American pun in a post on Slate’s The Good Word blog. He rails against terms such as bridezilla, techpreneur and chillax. Akam writes:

Gentle reader, are they not hideous things? If you are not yet convinced, brace yourself now for a tsunami of adjoinages. Stagflation, bootylicious, aeromotional, chillax, f—tard, bardolatry, bicurious, feminazi. All failed puns. There are others too that sit, manscaping-like, in the liminal territory of borderline pundom. Freakonomics works if the more conventional academic discipline is eek-onomics. It fails grimly if you say ek-onomics; vowel length is all.

For you word nerds out there, the actual term for these is “neolexic portmanteau,” which, in Akam’s words, are root words “brutally slammed together” with a “cavalier lack of wit.”

Given our reach, it makes sense that media organizations are often the culprits in spreading those words. But should we? Is our mission to speak in the voice of our readers, even if the mauls the language?

The top editors at the newspaper had discussed how we would handle his impending death. It was clearly a Page One story, we all agreed. Chavez was a tyrant and a fierce critic of America in our own hemisphere. Our president had been slammed for embracing Chavez at a summit just a few years ago. He was a polarizing figure and one of the largest providers of precious oil to our country. And, yes, there were many who loved him. Clearly, his life, long rule and influence were worthy of Page One.

He passed away late in the day after decisions about the front page had been made but in plenty of time to make a switch to get it on Page One.

I am the News Director at The Denver Post. I have been at The Post since 1999 in a variety of positions, including city editor and investigations editor. I previously worked at The Des Moines Register, and in Greenville, S.C.

I am a Colorado native who has been at The Post since 1996, working in copy editing and design before moving to administration. I created my first newspaper when the Broncos went to the Super Bowl in 1978.

I am the Digital Director for The Denver Post. I joined the Post’s web staff in 1999 — one week before the tragedy at Columbine High School. Prior to my journalism career, I worked in Washington as a legislative assistant for a New York congressman.

I am the Denver Post city editor and a Colorado native, who has worked at news organizations of all sizes. Raised to be a princess, I continue my adolescent rebellion by keeping bees and chickens in the backyard of a house my husband and I rescued from the wrecking ball. Read her full biography »